Editor’s note: the initial version mistakenly identified AES-CTR as “AES-CTB”, which doesn’t really exist. What got us here? 2017 was a weird year. It’s not often that the OTT video industry comes together to create simplify the industry player’s lives. It was tried before and failed. Then DASH appeared, it promised to rule on the OTT format wars, by proposing a single standard format, but at the end of the day, it failed to deliver its promise. DASH is a single standard, but as any other bad standard, it allows for options, incompatible options. It’s these options which allows standard compliant …

Last year (2016), Cablelabs published a very interesting document entitled “IP Multicast Adaptive Bit Rate Architecture Technical Report“, describing how to bring together two fundamental and previously incompatible network concepts: Multicast and Adaptive Bitrate delivery, in what it call Multicast ABR (M-ABR). But, does it make sense? If it does, on which use cases it works? Let me spoil the surprise: It does make sense on one single use case. It spectacularly fails elsewhere. To start with, lets have a look at the generic M-ABR architecture:

Adobe just made the news by announcing that Flash plugin would loose support by 2020, effectively setting a deadline for all browsers to disable it definitely, and wiping it from the face of the Internet. Unfortunately, that’s simply the death certificate of something which happened long ago. People just forget to tell Adobe about it, and Adobe has since refused to bow to reality. No one can tell exactly when Flash died, but the conclusion that it is dead is unavoidable. Just looking at today’s internet describes how low it has reached. As it is obvious on the chart below: Until 2015 we …

It seems funny, but this year’s Apple’s WWDC was one of the most import yet, but not due to something said during the 2017’s Keynote. Instead, this low profile presentation will have far reaching implications over the next 8 to 10 years on the video delivery industry, from Google to Netflix. As Apple decided to use H.265 and WebVTT, the whole industry will be forced to follow suit. The story started back in May 2010 when Google acquired On2 technologies, and specifically all the related IP to the VP8 video codec. Google was not happy with having to rely on …

This is the second part of the USB3 Gigabit on MacOS series. On the first post we discussed on how to choose an USB3 Gigabit adapter. On this post we try to answer to the following question: Does USB3 on MacOS supports gigabit speeds ? Read below to find out. To start with, let’s remember why it might be important for some users how does USB3 allows for gigabit ethernet performance: most recent MacBooks lack ethernet jacks. This means that, for power users, there are only a limited set of alternatives: Thunderbolt Gigabit adapters, for those laptops which support still …

Edit: This is the first half of a 2 part port regarding USB3 ethernet adaptors running on MacOS. The second part looks at actual performance. There aren’t a lot of good reasons why one would care about getting an USB3 Gigabit Ethernet adapter, and all start with “I need an extra wired gigabit connection”. And this may not be as weird as it seems as most MacBooks lack a single embedded wired gigabit interface. As an alternative you get the Thunderbolt adapter (in it’s native Thunderbolt port, or using the new USB-C connectors), USB3 adapter or 802.11 WiFi connection. Current state …

On our previous MicroSD shootout, Netac’s offering was deemed as the best MicroSD card for smartphones and compact cameras due to it’s low cost per MiB and very decent read performance. However, write performance was underwhelming, landing on the middle of the pack. It was with great surprise an high capacity, high performance MicroSD card from Netac landed on my desk: the Netac P500 Smart Card UHS-I U3 128GB MicroSD card (brands need to try to shorten the MicroSD product names, this is getting ridiculous….). This card corresponds to the fastest and highest capacity offer from Netac, supporting UHS-1 U3 speed …

There are currently two industry groups fight for market standardisation what regards to HDR: UHD Alliance and Ultra HD Forum. Every time this happens is usually due to a fight over consumer awareness on something that doesn’t make sense. We’ve already seen what UHD Alliance brings (or doesn’t….), but know there is a new group trying to make your mind: Ultra HD Forum. A lot has happened for last couple of years in the TV industry due to fuss around Ultra HD, always surrounded by confusion, mishaps and all around caos and damnation. How we got here Starting with the availability of …

Although I’ve been an Apple heavy user for a number of years now, it always bugs me when companies misrepresent their products, event if the misrepresentation is a underrating of the actual product. For me, specifications must be as accurate as possible, no matter if it comes from Apple, and understating it’s video decoding capabilities it not on my list of expected weird things, but it does seem to happen.

After having reviewed a number of different microSD cards, the next step could only be compare then over a number of perspectives, each of them making sense to a significant number of users. Now, I believe it is quite obvious for everyone that there isn’t probably a best microSD card but it really depends on which parameters, or ratios between parameters are relevant for each one. Each of them will then represent an important benchmark by itself, so let’s detail each of them: Read Performance – The basic SD card benchmark, and targeted by most manufacturers. Although overlooked in some reviews, …

Manufacturer Leapro Brand P500 Smart Card Announced Capacity 32 GiB Formatted Capacity 29.53 GiB UHS Class 1 SD Bus UHS104 Price AliExpress – €7.34 Netac is a chinese company most known in Asia by its USB drives ever since the early 2000’s, but on the SD card market a virtually unknown name. On our desk there’s Netac branded microSD, officially named as P500 Smart Card, yes “Smart Card”. Why on earth would it be called “Smart Card” is something that completely baffles us. If you still can’t believe, check the package photo. Fortunately, on the newly manufactured products the label seems to …

Manufacturer Jiaelec Corp Brand Transcend Premium 400x Announced Capacity 32 GiB Formatted Capacity 30,01 GiB UHS Class 1 SD Bus UHS104 Price Amazon.com – Only TS32GUSDU1PE available. Avoid! Amazon.co.uk – £8.91 AliExpress – €10.45 Again, 32GB are not the same everywhere. Sometimes it’s bigger. Transcend is one of the tradicional SD card players ever since the transition between MMC and SD, always marked by a performance conscience, although not as known as SanDisk. As our baseline SD card review demonstrates it has been a sure option when performance is relevant, however, more often than not companies just lean back on past hard …

Manufacturer Samsung Brand EVO Announced Capacity 32 GiB Formatted Capacity 29,80 GiB UHS Class 1 SD Bus UHS50 Price Amazon.com – $11.50 Amazon.co.uk – £8.99 AliExpress – €8.19 This is what vertical integration means… almost. When it comes to memory devices, Samsung is the the undisputed king of the hill, leading both DRAM and NAND markets, and a very relevant player on all semiconductor markets, including NAND controllers. With this in mind, we expect nothing short of a very competent display of performance from any Samsung branded product. In this review we focus com Samsung EVO MicroSDHC 32GiB card which is Samsung …

Manufacturer Kingston Brand MicroSDHC Announced Capacity 32 GB Formatted Capacity 28,97 GiB UHS Class 1 SD Bus UHS104 Price Amazon.com – $9.45 Amazon.co.uk – £7.59 AliExpress – €11.92 Sometimes, a gigabyte is smaller than it should … Kingston is one of the old kids on the block for flash storage. Althogh known for price conscious SD cards and USB sticks, it has recently started moving into higher performance products. This movement was probably driven by two different forces: pressure from lower cost asian vendors, and the need to create a higher brand awareness in order to compete on the SSD market. One thing …

… Or shall we call it Sandisk Ultra…? Manufacturer ADATA Brand Premier Announced Capacity 32 GB Formatted Capacity 29.71 GiB UHS Class I SD Bus UHS104 Price Amazon.com – Not recommended Amazon.co.uk – Not recommended AliExpress – € 9.66 Adata Is nowadays a very relevant player in the DRAM market but is also starting to emerge on the solid state market. Having offered products with higher than average performance at average price points made Adata a known brand is Asia and now appearing in both Europe and on the US. This MicroSD card from Adata is presented without flowering or blushing marketing. It is …

Manufacturer Mixza Tohaoll Brand Ocean Series Announced Capacity 32 GB Formatted Capacity 29,40 GiB UHS Class I SD Bus UHS104 Announced SD High Speed Measured Price Amazon.com – $11.99 AliExpress – €8.80 Mixza Tohaoll MicroSD – When things simply don’t add up Mixza is a little known recent company founded in China in 2009, which produces solid state products. It doesn’t manufactures any flash chips, or SD controllers, as Samsung or Micron, as so many other brands out there, like Kingston, Mixza simply resells products manufactured by 3rd party factories, or to some extent, packages all electronic components in-house. This specific MicroSD chip was manufactured …

Sandisk Ultra MicroSD Manufacturer Sandisk Brand SDHC Ultra Announced Capacity 32 GB Formatted Capacity 29,71 GiB UHS Class I SD Bus UHS50 Price Amazon.com – $11.99 Amazon.co.uk-8.19 AliExpress – €8,21 Sandisk is the incumbent portable flash storage manufacturer ever since the days of Compact Flash cards and one of the few that actually manufactures the products it sells under it’s brands. And ever since then Sandisk is known for high performance flash storage. Then it moved to the SD card market, and most recently on MicroSD. Since the Compact Flash times, the need to differentiate between different performance metrics causes Sandisk to brand …

An old Transcend SDCard Manufacturer Transcend Brand SDHC Class 10 Announced Capacity 16 GB Formatted Capacity 15,02 GiB UHS Class N/A SD Bus SD High Speed (SDR25) Price £7.50 Amazon.co.uk $7.50 Amazon.com €5,12 AliExpress In order to be able to compare the current breed of SD Cards, or even MicroSD, we need to find a baseline, from which to compare a draw conclusions. If at the same time, we can also get an idea of historical evolution, the better. Although not taking into account price declines solely due to Moore’s law, performer is expected to show significant improvements, as new SDA specifications got available, …

New Secure Digital cards sport theoretical speeds up to 104 MiB/s, for UHS-1 cards, or even 312 MiB/s for UHS-2 cards. Now, those are only bus speeds, and actual speeds may be a far cry from it, but in some instances real performance isn’t that different. On the other hand, it clearly demonstrates need for updates SD Adapters, as those new Secure Digital buses require compatible adapters, and again, USB3 compatibility. Then, which are the use cases for an USB3 adapter? Well, unless you intend to use your SD cards to extend your laptop storage, for instance, using one these …